Elon Musk Hints at Making Tesla Tech Open to Other Carmakers

In his global campaign to simultaneously raise the fortunes of Tesla as well as make the electric vehicles the norm, Elon Musk has now indicated that he may make the usage of his company's patented technology open to competitors.

A strong indication of Musk's plans came during his presentation at last week's Tesla shareholder meeting at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Responding to an audience suggestion of opening Tesla's Supercharger network to other automakers as a means to accelerate electric vehicle adoption around the world, Musk seemed to already have a few ideas in mind for such a move in the future.

"Ultimately we need all cars to go electric," said Musk, laying out his perspective on the global electric vehicle market. "If you look at the puny number of cars Tesla makes, it's a very tiny percentage of the overall market...

"I'm planning on doing something fairly significant on that front which would be kind of controversial with respect to Tesla's patents. But I probably want to write something so I can articulate it properly and explain the reasoning for the decision."

Musk's comments hinting at opening up his company's proprietary technology to others mirrors his earlier comments describing his Hyperloop mass transit idea. Initially proposed an idea during public comments in 2012, the following year Musk made the detailed plans public not long after posting a message on Twitter indicating that the plans would be patent-free.

@schadlu I really hate patents unless critical to company survival. Will publish Hyperloop as open source.

So while Tesla is far from a mere concept like the Hyperloop, and the proprietary technology behind the company is likely something shareholders would rather remain private, recent history suggests that Musk may indeed open up at least some of Tesla's technology in the coming years.

"The idea is not to create some sort of walled garden," said Musk. "We're more than happy to have other manufacturers use the Superchargers, they just have to create electric cars that can accept the power level of the supercharger."

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